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A cancer diagnosis can be life changing for anyone, bringing new physical and emotional realities, changed relationships, and often frustration when dealing with healthcare systems. But living north of sixty means dealing with a higher level of healthcare inequity. Agnes Pascal compiles firsthand narratives from Northern and Indigenous cancer survivors and caregivers that illuminate the unique challenges of health-care accessibility in the North.
In this rare volume, more than thirty voices offer compassionate advice and insightful analysis born from experience. With courage and dignity, they discuss fear, grief, and death; the logistics of medical travel for treatment; Indigenous and Western medicine; structural determinants of health, including industrial pollution and environmental racism; and the impacts of residential schools and “Indian hospitals” on northern communities. In these pages people share that hope comes from building healing communities.
This book is for people with cancer and their caregivers; health policy makers and advocates; scholars and practitioners of healthcare, Indigenous governance, or environmental racism; and anyone interested grassroots, community-based peer support.
— Richard Van Camp, author of Gather: Richard Van Camp on the Joy of Storytelling
“Prioritizing the voices of northern and Indigenous cancer patients, especially those from small communities, is critical for ensuring positive change within the Northwest Territories healthcare system. The inner strength of patients and the insights they share, are a gift to us all. ”
— Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, scientific director at Hotıì ts’eeda
“Being diagnosed with cancer can be a frightening experience but it can also be a journey of hope. This book does a wonderful job of encouraging those dealing with cancer and their families not to give up.”
— Sabet Biscaye, director of Gender Equity Division at Government of the Northwest Territories
“At times both a love letter to and indictment of a healthcare system that requires cancer patients to fly vast distances, often alone, for medical care, Book of Hope offers intimate and rare insights into life in the North, from northerners. These are powerful and astonishing stories about the ways traditional Indigenous medicine, dreams, faith and modern cancer treatments can impact the human body and spirit. It would be hard for anyone to read this and not be inspired, as I was, by the wisdom in these pages.”
— Laurie Sarkadi, author of Voice in the Wild
“This is a true exposé of the hardships that northerners experience, simply trying to
access good healthcare.”
— Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser, Gwichyà Gwich’in, from Inuvik and Dachan Choo Gę̀hnjik, Northwest Territories, Associate Professor in History and Native Studies, University of Alberta